Kabir Bani, Published by Jiyaa Parkaashan, New Delhi. 1960. From the Ames Library of South Asia, University of Minnesota. 

کبیر بانی / कबीर बानी, Kabir Bani, title written in Nastaliq and a faux-Arabic styled Devanagari, with little hooks at the top of each stem, and no top bar. Actually, the Arabic itself is rather odd – that top ک Kaf stroke is so far to the left! And the Nun-choti Ye combo looks strange to me, too. But tell me if I’m wrong! 🙂

Kabir was a mystic poet and saint from the 15th century who greatly influenced the Bhakti movement.

I managed to find a digitization of this book on Rekhta.org, a really amazing free resource for Urdu poetry and literature, accessible in Urdu, Hindi, or English. Bookmark this site!

So this book is actually a good example of side-by-side typesetting in different scripts. In the MATD program, we focused on creating multi-script typeface families that would look balanced and have a similar feel when used in a context such as this. Here are a few screenshots of the book’s interior, from the Rekhta page: